DRAFT DFS Strategy: 3 Person Snake Draft Advice

Dominate 3 Person Tournaments on Draft: NFL Week 2

One of my favorite formats to play fantasy football throughout the year is Draft.com’s 3-Person tournaments. They’re quick to knock out, really simple, and deal almost exclusively with the top options in offenses. I love that I can manipulate the draft to give myself the biggest edge.

How to Play?

Starting lineups are limited to 1 QB, 2 RBs, and 2 WR/TEs that are chosen through a snake draft. Scoring is standard with .5 PPR. The nice thing about these drafts is the reliance on the projections on Draft. We can use the projections on DailyRoto.com to come up with a strategy that applies game theory to give your team a leg up. There are about 284.8 points to divide among three teams by using the top player projections on DailyRoto this week. It’s a zero-sum game so what benefits your team necessarily hurts the other two. How you draft is critical.

*Projections may change throughout the week. These projections were pulled on Sept 11th for the full 16-game slate.

The QB projections are fairly in sync, but some things should stick right out and we’ll start with the RBs. Todd Gurley and Alvin Kamara projections are flip-flopped between Draft and DailyRoto with Kamara projected 2.5 points higher than Gurley. We are going to draft Kamara first even if we have the very first pick although they’re close enough that it’s not a deal breaker to go Gurley first if that’s your preference. The second thing you should notice is James Conner and Christian McCaffrey. Neither are projected in the top-8 RBs per Draft! This is going to be the single biggest inefficiency we can exploit this week. While David Johnson gets drafted too high, we can take Conner or McCaffrey for free.

You can also see a quick drop off between Antonio Brown, Michael Thomas, Julio Jones, and the rest of the receivers. The two sites have Odell Beckham Jr. and Keenan Allen flip-flopped. We want at least one of those top WRs, but we can probably safely draft OBJ late just like we can with Conner and McCaffrey. Let’s take a look at the draft from each position.

Drafting in First Position

I already mentioned Kamara’s projection so we’re going to start with him. The order might change a little bit depending on what the other two teams do, but we can safely assume Gurley, AB, and some combination of Michael Thomas, David Johnson, and/or Melvin Gordon are taken with the next four picks. If you look at the projections on draft, there is a sizable drop off between Melvin Gordon/David Johnson and the rest of the RBs while the four WRs after AB are all projected within 1.5 points of each other. I’m going to assume the drafters in the second and third slot take those RBs, which should let us select Michael Thomas and Julio Jones. Let’s take a look at what this draft may look like:

You

Team B

Team C

Alvin Kamara

Todd Gurley

Antonio Brown

Michael Thomas

Melvin Gordon

David Johnson

Julio Jones

Keenan Allen

DeAndre Hopkins

James Conner

Rob Gronkowski

Ezekiel Elliott

Drew Brees

Ben Roethlisberger

Aaron Rodgers

DR Proj Pts: 101.94

DR Proj Pts: 88.99

DR Proj Pts: 93.87

Draft Proj Pts: 88.4

Draft Proj Pts: 91.2

Draft Proj Pts: 87.3

Congrats, you have a massive advantage with this lineup. I used LeSean McCoy’s 14.0 points projection from Draft for James Conner. Even with that low projection for Conner, your team is within three points of Team B and you crush everyone using DailyRoto’s projections. If by chance Team B or Team C pick Michael Thomas, you can still select Julio Jones and Odell Beckham Jr. You’ll lose a little bit of your advantage, but not that much.

You may notice that you have three players on New Orleans. If you wanted to change it up a bit, you can start with Gurley and/or choose another QB like Ben Roethlisberger, Philip Rivers, or Alex Smith. It comes down to preference, but I’d rather roll with the three New Orleans players than stack James Conner and Ben Roethlisberger. Your drafts are going to be filled with a lot of players from New Orleans and Pittsburgh since both teams are projected to score more than 28 points this week so some sort of stack is nearly inevitable.

Drafting in Second Position

Drafting in the second position may actually be better than the first position. No matter what you get Gurley or Kamara, but you move up a spot for the second round so your chances of landing Michael Thomas increase. Here’s how the draft should look:

Team A

You

Team C

Todd Gurley

Alvin Kamara

Antonio Brown

Melvin Gordon

Michael Thomas

David Johnson

Julio Jones

Odell Beckham Jr

Ezekiel Elliott

DeAndre Hopkins

Drew Brees

Keenan Allen

Ben Roethlisberger

James Conner

Aaron Rodgers

DR Proj Pts: 92.42

DR Proj Pts: 100.29

DR Proj Pts: 92.41

Draft Proj Pts: 92.7

Draft Proj Pts: 87.5

Draft Proj Pts: 87.5

Once again, we’re loaded with players from New Orleans. We might have a problem if Team C goes AB/Michael Thomas. If that happens, we take Julio Jones with the second pick. The rest of the draft should remain unchanged.

Drafting in the Third Position

This looks like an ugly place to draft from. Gurley and Kamara will almost certainly be off the board by your pick. The normal draft flow has us selecting Antonio Brown, but we want to draft James Conner. Pittsburgh has a well-established history of feeding the RB even in Bell’s absence, but there have been a couple games in the past where DeAngelo Williams had single-digit carries. With Pittsburgh abandoning the run in those games, Brown was a target monster but we don’t really want to have one player thrive at the expense of our other. There’s the chance both players have great fantasy production like last week, but I’d rather have Michael Thomas and Kamara on my team than Conner and AB. Here are a few different team build options:

Team A

Team B

You

Todd Gurley

Alvin Kamara

Antonio Brown

Melvin Gordon

David Johnson

Ezekiel Elliott

Michael Thomas

Julio Jones

Odell Beckham Jr

DeAndre Hopkins

Keenan Allen

Ben Roethlisberger

Drew Brees

Aaron Rodgers

Christian McCaffrey

DR Proj Pts: 96.89

DR Proj Pts: 92.38

DR Proj Pts: 96.31

Draft Proj Pts: 93.5

Draft Proj Pts: 91.0

Draft Proj Pts: 81.8

You could start this draft Brown/Gordon as well without much of a drop-off. We avoid the Brown/Conner stack, but look at the projected points. It’s almost a three-person race. From a straight expected value standpoint, this is fine but Draft obviously gets their cut. Their rake means that over time you would lose money with this lineup since you’re only going to win right around 33% of the time. Let’s look at another option:

Team A

Team B

You

Todd Gurley

Alvin Kamara

Ezekiel Elliott

David Johnson

Antonio Brown

Michael Thomas

Julio Jones

Melvin Gordon

Odell Beckham Jr

DeAndre Hopkins

Keenan Allen

Drew Brees

Ben Roethlisberger

Aaron Rodgers

James Conner

DR Proj Pts: 91.30

DR Proj Pts: 97.02

DR Proj Pts: 96.28

Draft Proj Pts: 92.7

Draft Proj Pts: 93.0

Draft Proj Pts: 80.6

We avoided Brown so we could get the value with Conner, but the result was just about the same. Team B thanks you though. Where it was a virtual tie between you and Team A in the first scenario, now it’s a tie between you and Team B. What if we went WR heavy, but skipped Brown?

Team A

Team B

You

Todd Gurley

Alvin Kamara

Michael Thomas

Melvin Gordon

Antonio Brown

Julio Jones

Keenan Allen

David Johnson

Drew Brees

Rob Gronkowski

DeAndre Hopkins

James Conner

Ben Roethlisberger

Aaron Rodgers

Ezekiel Elliott

DR Proj Pts: 88.99

DR Proj Pts: 97.88

DR Proj Pts: 97.93

Draft Proj Pts: 91.2

Draft Proj Pts: 92.8

Draft Proj Pts: 82.9

This actually isn’t too bad. We’re in a virtual tie with Team B, but Team A is well behind. This might actually be profitable in the long run. Let’s just go for broke and see what it would look like to stack the Pittsburgh players:

Team A

Team B

You

Todd Gurley

Alvin Kamara

Antonio Brown

David Johnson

Julio Jones

Michael Thomas

Keenan Allen

Melvin Gordon

Ben Roethlisberger

Rob Gronkowski

DeAndre Hopkins

James Conner

Drew Brees

Aaron Rodgers

Ezekiel Elliott

DR Proj Pts: 88.29

DR Proj Pts: 94.44

DR Proj Pts: 102.07

Draft Proj Pts: 91.7

Draft Proj Pts: 90.8

Draft Proj Pts: 84.4

This we can work with. As ugly as it looked not getting Gurley or Kamara, we still end up with a significant advantage. I already talked about the problem with having Brown and Conner on the same team. It may work out, but I don’t like it. What I would probably do is modify this team just a little bit. I can replace Conner with Christian McCaffrey. I lose less than a point from the DailyRoto projection, but I still have a massive advantage. Notice that the RB order in the above draft doesn’t really matter. By your third pick, both of the other teams will have their two RBs. That’s why you may as well draft your QB of choice. This is also why I said Team C may be a problem if they go WR/WR when we draft in the one or two spot.

Conclusion

You should be able to finagle yourself a nice little advantage by recognizing the value of James Conner, Christian McCaffrey, and OBJ. If you happen to find yourself drafting third, make sure you go WR/WR. Happy hunting.

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Eric Ludwig

Eric joined the Navy just before 9/11 and shipped off to boot camp as a Nuclear Engineer in January 2002. He was accepted into an officer program and became a Surface Warfare Officer driving big ships with lots of guns after graduating from The University of Memphis with a degree in Engineering. Eric played fantasy football for years before the Navy, but limited internet access and hectic schedules during multiple deployments made following football closely nearly impossible. Upon returning stateside, Eric started consuming fantasy strategies and analysis to catch back up on the NFL. Not only did Eric catch up, he got hooked and caught the fantasy sickness. Eric separated from the Navy and returned to his hometown of Buffalo, NY to resume his sadistic love of the Bills locally.
In addition to football, Eric loves poker and writing. The lessons Eric learned while reading well over 20 poker books and playing poker avidly often drives his approach to fantasy. As a family man, Eric doesn’t get away to the poker tables nearly enough, but he finds time to pursue his love of writing and fantasy football. Eric specializes in redraft league strategies and loves the complexity of auction drafts

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